1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device-managing system having a device, a managing apparatus that issues device-control information for controlling the device, and an information-processing apparatus that generates jobs, which are processed in the device according to the device-control information.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, copiers have gone beyond their function of copying originals and have multiple types of functions such as a function of printing print jobs from external clients and moreover a function of electrically sending scanned originals externally using an email or file transfer function. Such copiers are called MFPs (multi-function peripherals).
While MFPs have become more multifunctional, problems have arisen involving information management such as an increased risk of information leakage due to scanned information being able to be sent externally. And although this has long been an issue, since the cost of paper and toner that is consumed increases along with an increased number of sheets printed, there is a need to restrict the number of sheets that can be printed by each user.
Addressing these issues is an important issue from a perspective of reducing the TCO (total cost of ownership). When this issue is seen from a perspective of an administrator of the system or device, it would seem that there is a need to centrally set for each user the functions that can be used and an upper limit number of sheets that can be used, as well as to appropriately manage the amount of resources (number of sheets of paper for example) to be used by each user.
Several techniques for addressing this issue have already been proposed.
For example, Japanese Patent No. 3385258 describes as a method for restricting functions a method in which “print tokens” functioning as print function restriction information are generated by a management server and function restrictions are achieved by distributing these in advance to printer.
However, there is a problem with the above-mentioned conventional technique in that print tokens cannot be obtained when a malfunction occurs in the server that generates or manages the print tokens, and therefore printing cannot be carried out.